Jonathan Scott: Is Cameron’s message being heard in the North?

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Jonathan Scott is a former Conservative councillor and head of the
Yorkshire based Tory supporting think-tank, Conservative Vision.

Following the local elections in May, up and down
the country, David Cameron said, the Tories had made big gains in what were once
Labour and Liberal strongholds. Understandably, Cameron could barely contain his
glee – having successfully spun the idea that the party might actually lose
seats he was able instead to savour the sweet taste of electoral
success.

So unfamiliar has this taste been for the
Conservatives over the last fourteen years that there is a danger the party
could allow its intoxicating effects to blind them to the geographical limits of
our success.

Winning key seats in London is, of course, vital to
the Conservative renaissance, but victory in the South should not be allowed to
obscure the party’s real shortcomings in the North.

Indeed, if Cameron is not careful the geographical
boundary between our growing strength in the South and our continuing relative
weakness in the North, could harden into a political divide that will take years
to overcome.

No one should doubt Cameron is moving fast, that he
his changing the public and private face of the Conservative Party. But on the
doorsteps in the cities and towns of the North of England, few Tory canvassers
found the Cameron message of voting blue to go green, resonated with the party’s
core vote or those contemplating switching their vote to the Conservatives.

In the urban heartlands of Leeds, Bradford,
Sheffield and Hull, few if any Tory candidates found the voters exercised by the
fate of the ice cap – so Cameron’s exhortation to vote blue to go green, only
seemed to reinforce the impression in the North that we Conservatives had become
obsessed with the kind of issues which are of great concern to the chattering
middle classes of Notting Hill, but are of only peripheral interest to those
loyal and former Tory voters trying to survive in the much less hospitable
climate of our inner cities.

When Cameron talks of winning ‘up and down the
country’ he may fool voters in the South, but for the party faithful in the
North it strikes a hollow ring, since they know that the northernmost reach of
this success stretched no further than the Midlands, were Coventry returned to
Conservative control. In Yorkshire, for example, we lost seats in Bradford,
Kirklees, and Calderdale and stood still in Leeds. Sheffield, Newcastle,
Liverpool and Manchester remain virtual Conservative free zones.

During the Conservative leadership contest, David
Davis made it a central plank of his campaign that the Conservatives could not
hope to win the next General Election if they failed to make significant inroads
into the urban heartlands of northern England. As long as the party remained a
prisoner of its southern comfort zone, it would remain locked out of power
without hope of parole. He was right!

Cameron, to his credit, seemed to acknowledge this
fact. He brought the shadow cabinet to the North to hold its meetings, and made
the point of visiting key cities such as Leeds and Manchester which suggest that
Cameron both understood the need to shape the Tory message for the distinctive
northern electorate and that he believed that message was beginning to connect.
He was wrong, and he needs quickly to find out why.

At heart, Cameron’s failure in the North was not one
of tactics but of a lack of strategic outlook. The party’s decision to appoint
individual Shadow Cabinet Ministers who are responsible for the cities is a
start, but he need’s to go much further.

A fundamental review of the party structure is
essential. The party could consider the idea of a regional CCO, with a regional
board and a full time Chairman.

A full time Regional Chairman could oversee the
recruitment of more professionals in the areas of campaigns and the press? This
could then lead to a regional press office and the establishment of a regional
candidates list and training academy for those candidates. A northern policy
development forum could be established and feed its ideas and proposals directly
into the national policy review process but such a forum must be meaningful and
its ideas and proposals must be paid more than lip service to. We must re-engage
on a regional level with the business community that drifted away from us a long
time ago. Our campaigning message and techniques need a radical overhaul.
Cameron has many options but ensuring that a framework for delivering the
message exists and creating the message itself is vital. Currently, we neither
have the policies or enough personnel in place to make things happen on the
ground.

The challenge for Cameron and for us as a party is
to talk a political language that needs no translation in the North. It is a
language of self-reliance and personal responsibility. It is a language of
tolerance – but a tolerance whose limits are bound by the principles of fairness
and justice. It is a language which is unashamedly proud of tradition, yet not
fossilised to the point where it is resistant to change.

Cameron must not fuel the growing sense of
resentment that exists in the North.

He understands the politics of climate change – over
the next twelve months and beyond, he must read the political weather. A chill
wind is blowing from the north – it would be a terrible blow to his fortunes and
that of our party, if just when we are beginning to feel better about ourselves,
we were to catch a terrible cold.